I have never done it before because I dont think its right and I dont want my account closed, but how do all these people who stuff cookies continue to do so without getting caught??
Everyone eventually gets caught, so I wouldn't recommend trying it. If you want to see some examples, check out the research here: http://www.benedelman.org/cookiestuffing/ He goes through how people do it, and how people are caught doing it. It is ruining the affiliate marketing industry and is tarnishing the once good name
that's right, a bunch of people was sued by eBay for stuffing cookies in visitors' machines without letting them know. eBay sued them on grounds that they can't embed their affiliate links to earn commissions without directing them to eBay's sites first.
It's easy to get caught, trust me. I work on the advertiser side with some accounts in CJ and other platforms. It's simple - look for sites with a lot of clicks & a low conversion rate. I don't see cookie stuffing attempts very often, but when they happen, they're extremely obvious to the merchant.
Hmm .. this is a very good thread. Please see this site. hairstraightening.net This guy is using iFrames for sure and I believe, he is doing cookie stuffing as well. This site is actually ruling me out of competition on one of my websites. Although i'm winning on a few keywords, but still my sales suck all of a sudden. My conversion on Folica is dipping down. I have been making around 150 sales but all of a sudden, the sales have dipped down to around 100 sales a month. The traffic is more than before and in the festival season, with all those coupons and promos, the sales should go UP .. not down.
Can you point me to an example on that site? The only use of frames that I see on that site is when somebody actually clicks to visit the store with the product, so that's not exactly cookie stuffing. Yes, all that cookie stuffing does is force the user's browser to open a regular affiliate link, which sets the affiliate cookie. That cookie will be overwritten by other affiliate cookies if a user later clicks on another affiliate link for that merchant.
Hi tvmatt, Thanks for the reply. I'm not really sure how the cookie stuffing thing works and it is better that I don't know about it. I am not sure if that guy is doing anything unethical, but is using iframes within guidelines and is it ok to use iframes? Doesn't that affect the advertiser's site's credibility? Isn't it showing the users/visitors the wrong side of the picture and pretending that the sale is happening on the same site? I'm not sure whatever that guy is doing is ok or not. If you can answer these questions and help me understand, I will appreciate a lot. Regards, Andy.
Cookie stuffing is basically just calling up the affiliate link without the user's permission. iframes are frowned upon, but in a case like that, it's not considered cookie stuffing. Not sure why that site is iframing the pages, as there's no real purpose - but by iframing in this case, they're not doing anything unethical or cookie stuffing. Matt
Hi Matt, Thanks for answering my questions. Just one last question, if that site is iframing merchant's site, how does he get the credit of the sale?? If I iframe a website in my webpage, I believe, the users will see direct links (not the affiliate links). Then how does this guy get commission when a sale happens? This has something to do with coding, is it easy to integrate or some extended programming is involved? I appreciate your help. Regards, Andy.
As long as he launches the affiliate link in the iframe, the sales will count since the cookie will be dropped via that link. Matt
theres a way around everything if you know how to code. People who dont get caught are good at coding and erasing their steps.
There's no way around getting caught for cookie stuffing. Here's why: If you were somehow able to generate a third-party cookie, the cookie needs to be generated by CJ's system. Everytime CJ generates a cookie, it logs a click. High clicks w/low or no conversions is a clear sign of cookie stuffing or forced pageloads. Trust me - it's extremely obvious, and impossible to get around unless you have access to CJ's system & code.
I'm really enjoying this thread I heard about cookie stuffing but i didn't no what it entails I am going to read up on it a little bit more to see if i can find out exactly what its all about though i hate not knowing what stuff is and I have to look crazy cause everybody else no what it means except me some I'm going to do some research and see what I come up with thanks again for the interesting thread
But that should be pretty common. As in my case, one of my sites at CJ is performing pretty poor cuz it is new and the impressions it shows 7k, clicks 400, Sales = 0. Its not that I don't have traffic on that site, but most of the visitors are webmasters. And you know, webmasters rarely click on Ads + rarely would buy anything through the affiliate links (My opinion). I kinda dont like this site, so I don't really work it out cuz the niche is bogus. I know it won't convert too many clicks into sales. Still, I left the site running thinking 'maybe' at some point of time there will be a sale and atleast I will have some money that I spent on the domain name and the work I did on the site lol. However, as you mentioned "High clicks w/low or no conversions is a clear sign of cookie stuffing or forced pageloads", I believe, this will be the case with a lot of new affiliate sites. I guess, there must be other ways of judging who is doing what. Regards, Andy.
Hi Jodyq, Hope you had great holidays About the cookie stuffing thing, it is a good habit to stay off such things but I guess, we should atleast know about all of this so that we don't lose our sales and commissions to the evil. Nah, I don't have any plans to put my hands into black hat techniques, I'm doing wayyyyy better without all that nonsense. But I wish to play safe and know who is doing what. Regards, Andy.
who said you arent able to get the impression logged too? Its also very possible to fake impressions to make it look normal.